From the Do Not Take Yourself too Seriously Department—The New Parish Minister Makes a phone call

Posted by Kendall Harmon

Our new minister pleaded with the congregation for help with a church project. After weeks with few takers. he called our house with this deeply felt, if not diplomatic, request: "I am scaping the bottom of the barrel for volunteers and wonder if you might be able to help?"

--Virginia Nifong, of Auburndale, Florida, in the February 2013 Reader's Digest, page 188

LOL! It reminds me of a conversation with one of my students several years ago. I was helping out at the concession stand for a football game and one of my kids was watching me make the nacho sauce. He said, “Ma’am, it’s a good thing you’re awesome at teaching English because you’re not very good at much else.” Hahahahaha, I knew he didn’t mean it as a put-down so I simply agreed and thanked him.

A new Pastor in a small Oklahoma town spent the first four days making personal visits to each of the members, inviting them to come to his first services.

The following Sunday the church was all but empty. Accordingly, the Pastor placed a notice in the local newspapers, stating that, because the church was dead, it was everyone’s duty to give it a decent Christian burial. The funeral would be held the following Sunday afternoon, the notice said.

Morbidly curious, a large crowd turned out for the “funeral.” In front of the pulpit, they saw a closed coffin, smothered in flowers. After the Pastor delivered the eulogy, he opened the coffin and invited his congregation to come forward and pay their final respects to their dead church.

Filled with curiosity as to what would represent the corpse of a “dead church,” all the people eagerly lined up to look in the coffin. Each “mourner” peeped into the coffin then quickly turned away with a guilty, sheepish look.